Wolf Gang...

December 16, 2019

Wolf Gang...

It's crazy that after this I only have one more email to write and that's it. It still feels unreal to me that I'm going home so soon, and part of me still thinks and feels like I should be here for like 6 more months. I'm finally just understanding everything, so it kinda blows that now I go home, but I guess that's just how it's gonna go. It was a really good week though, we were able to get a lot of meetings in which was a huge change of pace from normal. We usually get canceled on about 80 percent of the time, but this week we had a every appointment go through which was a cool feeling. I also found out some cool Mongolian culture stuff. So whenever a man sees a wolf in the wild, he gets filled with this thing called Hiimori. It's a super weird thing that I still don't fully understand, but it's like the source of manliness, and it's sort of like this vigor that lives inside manly men. So I told this person that I had seen a wolf in the summer and they got all excited and sorta sober because I guess it's a big thing here for them. So I now am officially a true man, shout out to the Siberian wolf's. Also had another run in with a wolf on P-day last week. We were hiking and we were super deep in the woods, and these stray dogs followed us all the way to where we stopped. It was sick just kicking it with these dogs out in the snow storm, but when we were chilling they all started acting like crazy and ran down the hill towards something. We all whipped out our knives, and me and one other guy followed after the dogs. They were barking and digging around a tree, and turns out there was a little wolf bed by the tree, with some fresh wolf prints. So these dogs saved us, and I didn't see the wolf, but he definitely was there.

We met with a couple members last week, and one of them was name October, like the month. It's a Russian name I guess. It was cool, her and her husband are both Rm's, and when we went to their little ger they were both so nice to us, and chatted us up. They wanted me to come back again before I leave and they said they will make sheep head, so 2 days before I go, we are gonna go get some sheep head, I'm pretty hyped. The sheep head might be the best Mongolian food in all honesty, it's got a good flavor, just a weird experience.

Another day we went to visit an old investigator that just recently started coming to church. We visited her last week and she volunteered to pray and read from the Book of Mormon. It was dope, so we schedule an appointment for last week with her, and we went back to her ger and chatted for a while. Her mom was there, and she is from Khovd, so I told her I went to Khovd and she got so excited. She kept asking me if I was a pure Russian, and when I told her I was American, she never believed it, she said I was just too Russian looking to be anything other than Russian. She was also blown away by my Mongolian, and was so kind with her compliments. I chatted with her for a long time, and we talked about America, and I told her what it was and everything, and then we talked about mongolia and the traditions and the food and the people. She really had me fall in love with this place all over again. We were laughing and having such a good time together, and then Erdenetoya's father in law walked in the ger and saw us and got a huge smile on his face. He walked over to us and pulled out his snuff bottle and exchanged it with me (I wish I would have had mine on me) and then gave me a huge smile. If people exchange stuff bottles with you it means they are very very good friends with you, and appreciate you being with them. My bottle has juniper in it. Most people have tobacco in it. You exchange the bottles, take a sniff and then exchange them back. That was cool, then I chatted with him for a while before we actually started teaching Erdenetoya. When we taught her, she said that she went through this period where she didn't really become any more interested in the church, so she stopped everything, but when we visited last week she picked up her interest again and has prayed everyday and read the scriptures every day. That was awesome, it really helped me feel like I was doing something

I went on a split with Yorke this week so that we could visit Enhjin together before I left. That was really cool, we met her for lunch and she brought us some gifts. It was really special to chat with her again. It brought back a lot of memories being there with Yorke and her. She is definitely someone I will miss a lot from this place, she will always be a very good friend of mine.

So on Sunday we walked into the combined Sunday School lesson, and someone said "hey the teachers aren't at church today, so you will teach us." So I had to teach the come follow me on Revelations this week. Literally so hard to do in Mongolian, I don't understand it in English, and then I had to translate it and make a discussion out of it. Luckily it turned out good, I hope it did at least. The members were grateful that I was able to teach them and try to help them understand how revelations works. It was wild, an such a crazy experience. We did get a new investigator who is literally perfect. We taught her and she started by saying she doesn't believe there is a God, which we can work with. At the end of the lesson she asked me how does she get an answer if she wants to know this is true, and when she said this I actually threw my hands in the air out of shock and she said "what did I do something wrong?" Told her she didn't, and then she prayed and we finished the lesson. Later that night she messaged me and thanked me for bringing a good spirit to her, and teaching her about this gospel. She rocks, and I'm really glad I was able to help her out a little bit before I leave.

English is still going great, it's super strange that this is the last week I teach, and maybe yesterday was the last day. We still aren't for sure if we teach tomorrow or Friday yet. It was weird saying goodbye to our students, they were getting pretty sad when we told them we won't be back. I grew a really close relationship with some of them, so saying goodbye was weird. It made me realize just how much of this place I'm going to miss, my heart is in all of the things here, and leaving is going to be tough for me.

That's my week, love you guys, see you soon.

Austin